Denim regeneration; A jeans maker brings Quebec factory back to life

Eric Wazana can’t help giggling. Wearing a T-shirt and bumster pants of his own design, the creator of Second Denim Yoga Jeans is clearly delighted with his new purchase, a state-of-the-art 52,000-square-foot jeans factory nestled in the rolling green hills of Quebec’s Beauce region.

Beauce Jeans is the largest remaining Canadian manufacturer of jeans, in a region which stretches from south of Quebec City to Maine and once dotted with textile factories in every village.

Wazana, 40, and his brother Yacov, 31, bought the facility in March out of a desire to keep production at home. The last major contractor in the region, Groupe RGR, closed last summer, throwing at least 300 employees out of work and leaving the Wazanas in the lurch.

“The speed of fashion gets faster and faster, Eric Wazana said in a cafeteria away from the bustling factory floor. “Basically, we’re living in a world where the consumer knows everything - overnight. You need to give them what they want when they want it.

“From the day we conceive the product to the day we actually put it on the floor, we’re talking five weeks.”

Second Denim is able to do this because everything is “1,000 per cent” made in Canada, he said. Design and product development are done in Montreal, where Second employs 20 people.

Wazana’s move is fantastic because it will encourage others to bring production back here, said Elliot Lifson, vice-chairman of Peerless Clothing Inc. and president of the Canadian Apparel Federation.

“People are coming back a little because of the speed of delivery,” Lifson said, noting Chinese prices are rising and that in retail the most important issue is inventory turnover. “You can’t give everything away and still maintain your innovation and creativity.”

But mass market denim is gone, and unlikely to come back, according to Bob Kirke, executive director of the apparel federation.

He noted that at one point Levis had 2,000 employees making jeans in multiple factories in Canada. But keeping production here is more of a sentiment than a movement at the moment, he said. “You really have to want to do it.”

A supply of experienced labour, specialized machinery and the right spot at the right time came together for the Wazanas. This despite the fact that production costs are two to three times more expensive here than in China.

“We realized it was a human capital that was unique to the region, a know-how and a tradition.

“Here in Quebec, we were doing jeans for the Gap, Levis, Tommy Hilfiger in the hey-day, when they were rock and rolling. We were the capital of denim in North America,” Eric said.

Indeed, a plaque from the Gap hangs in the reception area of the Wazanas’ factory - formerly Les Confections Beauce. It awards the facility a 99-per-cent score on delivery. (The Office Québécois de la langue française paid a visit shortly before former owner André Simard closed the factory, and demanded that the plaque be removed and replaced with French, Simard recalled later, over lunch.)

Second Denim, founded in 2000, has experienced sales growth of 30 per cent to 50 per cent each year, Wazana said. Asked for sales figures, he laughed: “No way.”

Wazana, who achieved success with Yoga Jeans, is the chief and only designer, and is self-taught. Seventy per cent of production is Yoga Jeans. And denim runs in the family: his wife, Elissa Steiner, is denim buyer for a division of Reitmans. “If she wears it, it’s good,” he said.

The factory, now with 46 employees, can make 25,000 pairs of jeans a week, but production is not there yet. Although nobody can name a bigger facility for jeans in Canada, it remains a niche, high-end market.

Every major brand is manufactured overseas, al-though some smaller players, like Montreal’s Naked and Famous, also produce in Canada, according to apparel federation executives.

Second’s fabric, which is sourced around the world, is bought 30 to 45 days in advance. Some fabric can be dyed to order.

The facility would cost $20 million in Montreal; Wazana valued the Beauce factory at $4.5 million, noting that just one Gerber laser-cutting ma-chine costs $960,000 new.

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